There’s only one time when you can depend on the chronically backlogged, recklessly inefficient Department of Homeland Security to perform smoothly: election season.

While hundreds of thousands of visa overstayers and deportation fugitives remain on the loose, federal bureaucrats at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are hastily recruiting tens of thousands of foreigners for the Obama administration’s new “U.S. citizenship and immigrant civic integration” campaign.

For the past week, the agency has staged more than 200 naturalization ceremonies for more than 36,000 new citizens. In partnership with the Interior Department (the same one that blocked American veterans from visiting war memorials during the 2013 federal government standoff over spending), the feds hosted camera-ready events at national parks — and encouraged their new political pawns to post propaganda photos across social media.

Local law enforcement agencies have a hell of a time getting hold of federal agents to help screen and detain criminal aliens. Fingerprint databases spread across DHS, the State Department and the Justice Department still don’t talk to each other. There’s still no comprehensive database to track the exits and entries of temporary visa holders — let alone any functional system to kick out overstayers and keep them out.

But never mind all that! The Obama administration is here at the ready to provide new “customer service enhancements” this week so that “naturalization applicants will be able to use credit cards” to pay their $595 naturalization and $85 biometric fees. DHS has also formed a new partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture “to provide temporary office space to USCIS” and to “provide services to communities with significant numbers of immigrants who are not located near a USCIS office. Services will include biometrics collection, case interviews and information presentations.”

Wait, that’s not all. The same government that wasted billions of dollars on the botched federal Obamacare website for Americans has helpfully set up “new interactive practice civics tests” to help their new future voters secure a permanent Democratic ruling majority. The election-year naturalizers will have the test ready “in English … with other languages to follow” soon.

Make no mistake: Cultural assimilation into American life isn’t their goal. Political exploitation is.

Did you know that the Obama White House released $10 million in taxpayer money to 40 of its favorite left-wing groups in 26 states to facilitate the expedient citizenship drive? The amnesty-championing Asian Americans Advancing Justice is just one of the social justice recipients involved in pushing green card holders to naturalize — not to show their patriotism, but to march in partisan lockstep so that “political candidates will no longer be able to ignore this growing political force.” ACORN lives.

How carefully will the Obama DHS conduct its background checks of citizenship applicants before the election? If history is any guide, we already know the answer: as carefully as the EPA protects rivers in Colorado!

Remember: In the 1990s, the Clinton administration first turned immigration policy into a massive Democratic voter recruitment machine through the Citizenship USA program. Naturalization officers simply abandoned background checks wholesale. Former House Judiciary Committee chief counsel David Schippers recounted how a “blatant politicization” of the then-INS took place during the 1996 presidential campaign, during which the White House pressured the agency into expediting citizenship to thousands of aliens whom the White House counted as likely Democratic voters.

“To ensure maximum impact,” Schippers reported, “the INS concentrated on aliens in key states — California, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Texas — that hold a combined 181 electoral votes, just 89 short of the total needed to win the election.” In all, he determined, “more than a million aliens would be naturalized in time to vote in the 1996 election.”

In 2003, an Immigration and Naturalization Services center in Laguna Niguel, Calif., solved massive backlog problems by putting tens of thousands of applications through a shredder. In 2006, I exposed how some high-immigrant regions rewarded adjudication officers with bonuses for rubber-stamping as many applications as possible without regard to security. And under President Obama, a whistleblower told Judicial Watch how the administration had abandoned required background checks in 2012, instead adopting “lean and lite” procedures to try to keep up with the flood of amnesty applications spurred by Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) directive, which grants illegal aliens a two-year deferment from deportation.

The dysfunctional DHS can’t control our borders. It has failed to prevent massive fraud in our asylum, student visa, visitor visa, business visa, tech worker visa and immigrant investor green card programs. And the department is overwhelmed with paperwork from 10 million applicants for Obama’s executive amnesty waivers. But when it comes to signing up new potential Democratic voters in droves, the feckless feds run a NASCAR-ready well-oiled machine.

Suicidal Republicans who continue to hand over the open-borders keys to their hit-and-run opponents reap what they sow.

COPYRIGHT 2015 CREATORS.COM

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.

Remember, on the occasion of the signing of Obamacare (I mean, the ACA), the ever-classy Joe Biden telling Obama it was a BFD (big ^%&%&* deal)? Well, now it’s DOA.

Several years ago, common sense Americans challenged their representatives in Congress, objecting to healthcare reform proposed by the president. Their objections were straightforward, expressed by a substantial majority, a majority that continues to this day:

Nationalizing healthcare gives too much power to the central government: it’s un-American.

We are already broke and cannot afford this in the first place: it will bankrupt the country.

The federal government has bankrupted Medicare and Social Security, and it will bankrupt this as well.

The proposal is far too complicated.

More useful reforms are available: interstate competition, expanding private options, tamping down frivolous lawsuits, other cost control measures, certain expansions of the Medicare program to cover pre-existing conditions, etc.

We don’t want a bureaucrat limiting what our doctor can order in terms of testing to diagnose, or in terms of treatment options.

Federal intervention will increase costs, limit access, damage quality of care, and essentially destroy the best system in the world.

So-called representatives ignored the people. Conspiring with the criminal class in D.C., they helped this president railroad the bill, using every corrupt trick in the book. Insiders got favors, special conditions, and exemptions. Politicians were bought off. The corruption even extended to the Supreme Court. The court eventually ruled that the government has a right to force citizens to buy things they don’t want, don’t need, and can’t use. In most circles, all this is referred to as tyranny.

The $900 Billion cost estimate in the first 10 years became $2 Trillion, then $3 Trillion.

Broken promises stacked up: you can keep your insurance, you can keep your doctor, nothing will change, costs will go down, access will improve—we’re from the government, and we are here to help you.

Then cracks in the smiley face appeared. More than 1,000 waivers. Special interests favored. Delays. Unlawful changes after the bill was passed and signed into law. The king simply waving his scepter, commanding compliance, violating the Constitution.

The fulfillments even caused labor unions to howl. They claimed their members would be devastated. Employers rebelled. Full time workers became part timers as employers cut back to avoid going belly up. Unemployment was aggravated, and a staggering economy began falling into the ditch, again. At least unemployed youth, about 6 million, were allowed to stay on parents’ health plans.

Then came the roll out.

In ObamaSpeak, ‘epic failure’ really means ‘a few glitches.’ The Uncle Sam Whiz Bang Insurance Sales website, three years in the making, was a total failure. It requires millions of lines of code to be rewritten at enormous cost overruns. And more is being revealed:

Federal legislators, their staffers, and everyone in the executive branch are exempt!

45 states report that insurance premiums are increasing substantially across the board.

Navigators, including unscreened recycled ACORN types, have full access to your personal information.

There is reasonable fear that identity theft will be rampant.

Signing up for insurance is a nightmare: online, on the phone, or in person (hello ACORN!)

15,000 IRS agents are poised to enforce this monster (why do they need guns?)

Home healthcare inspectors will visit to make sure you are in compliance (is this why Obama wants our guns?)

Taxpayers forced to pay for abortion against their will, in complete violation of the 1st Amendment.

Most everyone in the healthcare industry calls this a disaster; doctors are retiring early, and enrollments in medical schools are down.

Lawsuits galore: many states in full rebellion, the feds promising retaliation.

Huge numbers of people are losing their preferred plans.

Chaos.

Unlike the president today in the Rose Garden, some politicians have been honest.

Sen. Max Baucus, who helped write and railroad the bill, calls it a ‘train wreck’ intentionally designed for fail. Fail? Yes. Universal care is the goal (i.e. total government control.) ObamaCare is only a stepping stone. Many Democrat leaders, including Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barney Frank, have openly said that the real goal is complete socialized medicine. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch agrees: ObamaCare was designed to fail so that complete control can be instituted.

Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee have simply heeded the voices of common sense Americans expressing majority sentiment for years. In other words, these senators are doing their jobs and representing their constituents, unlike the elitists whoring for the White House.

And by the way, you must finally conclude that ObamaCare is a total scam and a sham when even Oprah won’t endorse it. Despite Obama’s Newspeak, his tall tales, and maybe 40,000 pre-conditions covered, his signature legislation spells ObamaSnare, DOA.

Either the American people rise up and take their government back, or the government will reach down and choke the life out of this country.

That’s a death panel we won’t avoid if we submit to this madness.

Allan Erickson enjoyed an 11-year career in radio, television and print journalism as a reporter, talk show host, and operations manager. He then turned to sales and marketing for 20 years. He is the author of the book “The Cross & the Constitution in the Age of Incoherence,” Tate Publishing, 2012. He is available to speak in churches addressing the topics of faith and freedom. To contact him, email: allanlerickson@gmail.com

The shortcomings of ObamaCare continue to seep into the light, putting the lie to virtually every claim made by Barack Hussein about his namesake “healthcare” scheme. But one part of the law remains as much a mystery now as when it was written.

“No individual, company, business, nonprofit entity, or health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall be required to participate in any Federal health insurance program created under this Act (or any amendments made by this Act), or in any Federal health insurance program expanded by this Act (or any such amendment), and there shall be no penalty or fine imposed upon any such issuer for choosing not to participate in such programs.”

Authors of the Affordable Care Act knew it would be unconstitutional to demand that 300 million Americans purchase health insurance. So they provided a way out, albeit with the payment of a penalty. It is this right to opt out of ObamaCare that applies to “individuals, companies, businesses and nonprofit entities,” just as it says in Section 1555.

But the Section’s language then begs the question: What is so special about “health insurance issuers [who offer] group or individual health insurance coverage?” Why are these individuals (or groups) so obviously singled out for exemption from the ACA? And why are they spared payment of the ObamaCare penalty?

Numerous exemptions were awarded to the politically connected after the passage of ObamaCare, including most of the restaurants and night clubs in Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district. But these little slices of political payback were doled out after the fact. None had been made part of the law itself.

So why the red carpet for “health insurance issuers?”

Because the thousands of ObamaCare “navigators” who will be paid to collect the most sensitive and personal of information from ObamaCare enrollees will become health insurance issuers themselves. And most important, in addition to collecting Social Security numbers, ObamaCare navigators will also be registering voters!

According to the People’s World newspaper, “California’s Secretary of State Debra Bowen is designating the state’s new Health Benefit Exchange, Covered California, as a voter registration agency under the National Voter Registration Act. That means Covered California will be incorporating voter registration into every transaction — online, in-person and by phone — it has with consumers.” In short, “…Obama supporters have found a new way to fill the void left by the bankruptcy of ACORN, the notorious left-wing voter-registration group that saw dozens of its employees in multiple states convicted of fraud.”

So the authors of the Affordable Care Act appear to have written a very accommodating exemption for members of ACORN Redux right into the ObamaCare law! And Barack’s old crew of community organizers will have access to the Federal Data Hub, a massive computer system that will house the personal information of every ObamaCare enrollee as it connects HHS, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, Homeland Security, and countless additional federal bureaucracies.

Perhaps the logging of Data Hub time will give navigators something to do between the signing of ObamaCare enrollees as members of the Democrat Party.

A new kind of investigative reporting was unveiled at The New York Times on Monday. A story about the communist connections of a major politician was plastered across page 19 of the paper. Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, just endorsed by President Obama, was the subject of a long story about his support for the Communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Whatever the reason for the scrutiny, the paper has opened the door to additional investigations of Democratic Party politicians, including Obama himself.

The story represents vindication for the late Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), who gave rise to the term “McCarthyism,” a search for Communist connections and anti-Americanism that was considered objectionable by progressives collaborating with enemies of the U.S. McCarthyism, it seems, is now in vogue at The New York Times.

Salon, whose editor has endorsed de Blasio as a “real progressive,” calls the Times article on de Blasio an “anti-lefty hit piece.” By the liberal Times? What is going on here?

“References to his early activism have been omitted from his campaign Web site,” the Times said about de Blasio, in a revelation that could have also applied to Barack Obama’s relationship with Communist Frank Marshall Davis, and his run for the presidency.

So what we have here is a cover-up of the first order.

In de Blasio’s case, the paper undertook investigations that would have made Senator Joe McCarthy proud. It said, “…a review of hundreds of pages of records and more than two dozen interviews suggest his time as a young activist was more influential in shaping his ideology than previously known, and far more political than typical humanitarian work.”

This is simply incredible, as well as admirable, on the part of the Times and its reporter, Javier C. Hernandez. The Communist background of a major political figure has suddenly become newsworthy. The paper even noted that de Blasio went on an illegal honeymoon to Communist Cuba.

It appears that his real “honey” was Fidel Castro. No wonder he is engaged in a cover-up.

Despite the Times’ investigative work, it is clear that more scrutiny is needed, even of his family connections. The Times says that de Blasio’s mother, “then working at the Office of War Information in New York, was accused of being a Communist for attending a concert featuring a Soviet band.” It’s doubtful that attending a Soviet concert is all there is to this particular subversive connection.

Bringing the story back to de Blasio, the paper added that he “studied Latin American politics at Columbia and was conversational in Spanish, grew to be an admirer of Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista party, thrusting himself into one of the most polarizing issues in American politics at the time.”

Trying to explain the situation at the time, the paper said, “The Reagan administration denounced the Sandinistas as tyrannical and Communist, while their liberal backers argued that after years of dictatorship, they were building a free society with broad access to education, land and health care.”

Of course, the Sandinistas were indeed puppets of the Soviets and the Cubans and remain so to this day. Except that the Soviets have become the Russians, and the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela emerged as one of their modern-day mentors (in addition to the Castro brothers.)

This is not completely an old news story, since the Sandinistas have returned to power in Nicaragua. Indeed, the Communists are on the rise throughout Latin America.

The Times added that “de Blasio became an ardent supporter of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries. He helped raise funds for the Sandinistas in New York and subscribed to the party’s newspaper, Barricada, or Barricade. When he was asked at a meeting in 1990 about his goals for society, he said he was an advocate of ‘democratic socialism.’”

The Times said that de Blasio did most of his work on behalf of the Sandinistas through the Quixote Center in Maryland, a group I came across while writing about the wars in Central America for Human Events in the 1980s. A spin-off, the Christic Institute, filed a frivolous lawsuit against supporters of the Nicaragua freedom fighters. You can still see my 1987 debate with Daniel Sheehan of the Christic Institute on C-SPAN.

When I noted the Communist links of the Christic Institute during the debate, Sheehan’s predictable response was: “Joe McCarthy.” His frivolous lawsuit was thrown out of court in a case that I described as “legal terrorism” against anti-communists.

The FBI file on the Christic Institute is helpful in analyzing its political contacts, such as then-Senator John Kerry, used in order to make support for the anti-Sandinista, pro-freedom cause into a “scandal.”

The Quixote Center was “founded by Catholic leaders,” as the Times points out, but these “leaders” were on the far left and dedicated to the belief that communism and Christianity could mix. It is also known as liberation theology.

De Blasio also raised money for the Nicaragua Solidarity Network, the Times said. “In 1991, at one of his final meetings with the Nicaragua Solidarity Network, he argued that the liberal values the group had defended were ‘far from dead’ around the world, with blossoming movements in places like Mexico, the Philippines, El Salvador and Brazil, according to minutes of the meeting,” the Times reported. “He spoke of a need to understand and build alliances with Islam, predicting it would soon be a dominant force in politics.”

This alliance with Islam is, of course, typical of many leftists, such as Carlos the Jackal, the terrorist trained by the KGB who converted to Islam and became devoted to Osama bin Laden.

Promoting a Marxist alliance with Islam, in view of 9/11 and the anti-American terrorism around the world, is something that takes on ominous and frightening implications.

Such talk is highly relevant today because, as mayor, de Blasio could dismantle the New York Police Department’s aggressive campaign to uncover jihad plots targeting the citizens of that city and the nation.

But Joan Walsh of Salon hails his “bold stands on police controversies.”

He is the frontrunner for mayor and has the endorsement of Barack Obama, who says, “Progressive change is the centerpiece of Bill de Blasio’s vision for New York City, and it’s why he will be a great mayor of America’s largest city.”

As for de Blasio himself, today, he too, “describes himself as a progressive,” the Times reports.

His endorsements include not only Obama and the Clintons, but also such figures as Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), George Soros, “The Nation” editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, Alec Baldwin, Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, and former ACORN head Bertha Lewis.

Following up on the Times investigation, the CBS affiliate in New York confirmed that “De Blasio’s official biography on his campaign website makes no mention of his activism.”

Activism? Is that what organizing for communist revolution has become?

In any case, why would he want to hide his “progressive activism” on behalf of the Communists? Perhaps the connections go far beyond what the paper itself calls items on the “social justice” agenda.

In fact, the paper said he gave them a recent interview and that de Blasio said his views then—and now—“represented a mix of admiration for European social democratic movements, Mr. Roosevelt’s New Deal and liberation theology.”

So a mix of communism and Christianity is still appealing to him.

At the bottom of his campaign website, one finds the category of “transparency,” where we find “hosts of campaign-sponsored events,” but nothing about his Marxist background.

It would appear that the Times has uncovered a Pandora’s box of connections that the candidate never wanted to be discovered.

What else is he hiding? And after de Blasio is completely exposed, can we turn our attention to President Obama?

This commentary originally appeared at AIM.org and is reprinted here with permission.

Noted American terrorist and left-wing radical Bill Ayers is among the signatories of a letter calling on the United Nations to probe the closing of 49 Chicago elementary schools based on claims that it is causing massive human rights violations.

The “letter of allegation” is 24 pages long and contains 17 footnotes.

The Midwest Coalition for Human Rights sent the missive to the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland this week.

The Coalition is a network of over 50 organizations united to fight “serious human rights violations occurring in the United States.”

A number of individuals and organizations sponsored the letter. In addition to Ayers, others signers of the letter include four people associated with Action Now, an Illinois community-organizing group that split off from ACORN just before it dissolved because of financial problems and scandals.